


I Just Need Your Hand

by Rosage



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Established Relationship, Other, Post-Canon, References to backstory trauma and death, Sappy, Surreal magical realm shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:34:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25514374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosage/pseuds/Rosage
Summary: Asra and Julian undergo a trial in the Lovers’ realm.
Relationships: Asra/Julian Devorak
Comments: 7
Kudos: 40





	1. All the Way Down

**Author's Note:**

> Carrow is Fayery’s apprentice. He and Muriel are very happy together.
> 
> I hope this is as fun for someone to read as it was for me to write!

Asra lounges on the library floor, drifting off in the fireplace’s warmth while his parents and Ilya chat. Plush pillows, along with scents of smoking wood and old paper, lull him further despite his alert companions—Faust coils on his head, Chimes guards his arm, and Flamel slithers over his legs. Their conversation interests him more than the humans’ until his eyes flutter open at Ilya’s words.

“I bet you two had a lovely wedding.”

Ilya has dragged his desk chair to the overstuffed couch where Asra’s parents relax. Though they’ve finished the day’s research, Salim still has a notepad open on his knee. Aisha lifts the quill from his hand before he can spatter ink. It’s easy to imagine them planning a wedding, with Aisha correcting Salim’s many lists, but Asra can’t picture them young and flushed at the ceremony.

Ilya’s lists would be too illegible for Asra to pare down. A troupe of torch jugglers and sword-swallowers could show up before he got the memo. The thought brings a small smile, and he squeezes his eyes shut.

“Of course, though I regret to say I hardly remember,” Salim says. “The trial, on the other hand…”

“Trial?” Ilya asks, no doubt picturing a courtroom or some flaming obstacle course.

“Before we got married, we underwent a trial in the Lovers’ realm,” Aisha says.

“That, uh, that some kind of requirement for magicians?”

“Not at all, though Salim was insistent. For love or curiosity, I’m not sure.”

“Can’t it be both?” Salim asks.

The trials are personalized, they explain, smiling at each other in lieu of describing theirs. Sections represent the past, present, and future, all meant to test an individual or relationship’s harmony, values, and choices.

“Sounds like a fun date. What do you say, Asra?” Ilya asks.

Asra props himself up. “You want to do a trial with the Arcana?”

“Why not? It, uh, sounds like fun.” Ilya folds his arms and leans back until his chair teeters on two legs.

“So you’ve said.” Asra’s face warms at his parents’ attention. After untangling himself from the snakes, he pulls Ilya behind a tall shelf crawling with ivy. “You’re serious about this?”

“Should I, should I not be serious about it?”

“I’m game if you are. I’ve always wanted to meet the Lovers.”

Ilya’s foot taps. “Fantastic.”

He wants to talk to Asra’s parents alone, so Asra and Faust return to their palace bedroom. After Muriel moved into the shop, Nadia gave Asra a place across the wing from his parents, and Ilya stays over more often than not. The smell of coffee lingers under a layer of incense, a pervasive bitterness that has become warming.

Asra searches his shelves and upends his bag for his book on the Arcana. When he got it back, he meant to be careful with it—but then, it’s not all he has of his parents anymore. He finds it under a scarf and settles by the windowsill housing his favorite succulents. Stroking a waxy leaf, he flips through the tome. Ilya’s additions to the Lovers’ pages make him scowl. Tear-blotched doodles fill the margins, along with notes Asra can’t read beyond _stupid_ repeated in all caps.

They never broke up. They just stopped seeing each other, with Asra setting up Lucio’s ritual while Ilya was locked away, bleeding ink in search of a cure. By turning Asra’s stolen heirloom into an adolescent’s diary, apparently.

And now he wants to do a Lovers’ trial. It’s been almost a year since they’ve gotten back together, long enough that the tome should only earn a joke at Ilya’s expense. Asra touches his succulents so absently he pricks himself.

He sucks on the finger while Faust nuzzles his cheek. He and Ilya are past all this, they must be.

Maybe the Lovers’ trial will prove that.

* * *

An owl hoots in the tree over Asra. He sits cross-legged on the ground, inhaling the garden’s sweet scents while his father sprinkles a vial of liquid around the group. In the center, Chimes and Flamel slide around a copper disk. Magic flows like water between Asra and his mother’s joined hands. With his parents as anchors, making it to the Lovers’ realm will be easy, even without Asra activating his pact mark. All that’s required is what’s left of his heart.

Ilya clings to his other hand. Asra rubs his knuckles with a thumb. Once Salim settles across from Asra, Aisha directs all of their breathing, until four different energies swirl behind Asra’s closed eyes. Faust’s weight around his shoulders falls away as he slips out of his body.

“I can’t feel you,” Ilya says. Panic rises from the imprint of his hand in Asra’s. Asra imagines a wave folding over Ilya’s nerves.

“I’m right here.”

Ilya swivels his head, as if startled to find they are anywhere. A river burbles at their feet, sparkling with the purple and amber tones that suffuse the realm. Heart shapes hide everywhere, from the forest's branches, to rocks studding the riverbank, to clouds drifting in the direction of the river.

“It’s flowing upstream,” Ilya says. Crouching, he sticks a hand in the water. He shakes it dry and shoves it in the folds of his jacket. “Where’d I put my notebook?”

“Just experience it with me. It’s probably like weddings, you know, a big deal you won’t remember properly.”

Red-faced, Ilya stands. His boot leaves a heart-shaped print in the muck. “So, uh, where’s the front desk?”

“This place knows why we’re here. Let’s explore.”

They start up a gentle slope. Asra slows their pace to touch fuzzy leaves and read initials scratched into the bark. Hearts couch some of them, while others accompany notes from groups of friends. Did the realm conjure them, or did real people mark their love where it couldn’t wither, where storms couldn’t uproot it? He can’t find an _A+S_ , but his parents would have been more creative. Maybe they planted a whole tree to shelter anyone else who wanted to last.

Ilya opens and closes his mouth. He looks between the letters, Asra, and the ground. A dozen ways they could depict themselves swirl in Asra’s head, but he only takes Ilya’s hand.

Doves coo in the branches, their song too harmonized for real animals. Ilya shivers at a red carapace on a leaf.

“It’s only a ladybug. No bodies means no plague,” Asra says.

The bug morphs into a beetle, and the river turns a rusty red. A row of slanted buildings replaces the forest. Messy public notices plaster one door.

“My old clinic,” Ilya breathes.

The only two outside it are Asra and Carrow, the latter clutching a plague doctor’s mask in gloved hands. Ilya calls out to him.

“It’s just an illusion. The past section of the trial must have begun,” Asra says calmly. Inside, he’s as sick as the canal. Carrow’s pitying expression is all too familiar, as are the words that once looped in Asra’s mind.

 _I can’t go with you_.

His own face, younger and shadowed, contorts in response. _But why?_

_I have to look after the clinic. Dr. Devorak put me in charge._

_He what? Oh, I see. He left you here while he goes off to help that tyrant_.

 _He’s trying to help everyone! And I want to do the same_.

The past Asra reaches for Carrow’s shoulder, hovering shy of his contaminated uniform. _Please, this isn’t your responsibility, it can’t be. You’ll die_.

Ilya stands transfixed, his jaw slack. Asra chews his lip hard. He prepared for the realm to throw some ugly scene with Ilya at them, maybe a fight in the library, not this.

He tries to tug Ilya away. “Come on, you weren’t even there.”

The illusion of him spits out something else about _Dr. Devorak_. Ilya winces.

“I did. I did just leave, leave him to die.”

Cold fire flares in Asra’s chest. He douses it. “We’ve talked about this. Besides, he would have stayed anyway. That’s the kind of person he is.”

“Still, I could’ve—I should’ve been there.”

“You weren’t. Please, we agreed to move on.”

Ilya looks at their hands as if surprised they’re linked. This time, he lets Asra lead him. Asra can’t outrun the sight of himself turning his back on Carrow, even as he wants to scream not to.

They keep climbing. They can’t see the ground, only those heart-shaped prints, but their feet guide them upward.

Their surroundings melt into the library. Ilya leans against a bookcase, peering down with two healthy eyes at Asra, who holds a book to his chest. He laughs at something Ilya says, and the real Asra relaxes. A good memory. It’s easy to forget.

The fake Ilya holds out his hand. _Where are my manners? Dr. Devorak, at your service._

“Aw, look,” Ilya says, “this was our first—”

The old Asra’s smile vanishes. His eyes widen before going blank.

“Oh. I wondered why you stopped being friendly,” Ilya says. “I told myself you were just shy, and needed me to bring you out of your shell.”

“With endless pestering, of course.”

“Of course. Why would I be considerate?” Ilya rubs his temple. “No point in sticking around, you walked away from me not long after—ah, there you go.” He waves at the illusory Asra, and the real one snorts.

Walking up an invisible path jars him more when the incline steepens, even as they descend winding stone stairs. Ilya mutters about science until he freezes at the next sight: himself gesticulating at Valdemar, who stands unmoving.

 _This has gone on long enough. We’re only creating more victims_.

 _If you’re afraid to do what is necessary, that magician you fixate on has a fascinating mind_.

_Wait, no, please…_

Ilya’s grip becomes a vice. It’s not enough to ground Asra when they’re launched back to the library, where his illusory self curls up on a pillow pile. He tries to get Ilya’s attention in bits, like a cat swiping things off a table. It’s fruitless until the sky darkens, and Ilya begins to hover as a guard in his space, despite how Asra wards him off.

“You should have told me,” Asra says. He doesn’t know whose hand is clenched in whose.

“I should have. I just—I was so scared.”

Though he doesn’t need to breathe, Asra does it to calm himself. That wasn’t the first, or even second, time someone used him to get at his loved ones. He won’t let it work now.

“They can’t hurt anyone anymore,” he says, and pulls Ilya up out of the library.

A wrought-iron gate rises in front of them. Heat licks him, hot enough to blister, but his insides go cold. The wavering flames reveal himself in a snake mask, standing before the Devil. Though the fire’s crackle drowns out their conversation, he knows what he offers before the Devil plunges a claw into his chest.

Screaming, Ilya jerks forward. Asra wraps himself around Ilya’s arm. “We need to stay together.”

Before Ilya can respond, they’re in another forest, mangroves bordering a swamp that smells oddly of dust. Muggy air glues Asra’s shirt to him. On an island, a plague-ridden Ilya hangs upside down while the Hanged Man etches a mark into his throat.

The heat doesn’t prevent Asra’s goosebumps. Knee-deep in slime, Ilya barks humorlessly.

“What are we doing?” he asks. “In the past, at a Lovers’ trial, of all things? Me, who didn’t want my memories, and you, who didn’t want your heart?”

Asra flinches. He’s hollow, with too many things to name crawling around the surface. “I never said I didn’t want it. Aren’t you the one who loves sacrifice?”

“Aren’t you the one who hates it?”

When he lets go of Ilya, Asra can’t take another step. Murky waters rise to suck at his waist. The incline is steep enough to slip, to drop straight down, back to the bottom.

“This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t stolen my book,” Asra blurts.

“What book?”  
  
“My book! The one you wrote in.”

“Ooh, that creepy tome with the—”

“My _parents_ made that creepy tome.”

Ilya throws up his hands. “How was I supposed to know that? You didn’t tell me anything! I had nothing left but your, your…”

“My hocus-pocus?” Asra says, even as he recalls the one legible sentence pressed into the tome: _I want to believe_.

“That’s—wait. How is this what we’re fighting about?”

Asra blinks. They’re in total darkness, with only the river’s burble nearby. A laugh escapes him.

“Not our friend’s death,” Asra says.

“Or our deals with otherworldly beings.”

“Or your terrible art.”

“Hey, I’ll have you know my style is very evocative!”

Asra laughs again, and soon they’re both doubled over, howling into the void. Asra grabs Ilya’s hand before they can pitch forward.

“Come on. We already overcame all of this,” Asra says.

Ilya takes his other hand. Where Ilya’s skin is usually cool, the imprint of him warms everywhere he cradles Asra.

“Say, does this place take requests? I want to see the part where a dashing gentleman returns to sweep you off your feet.”

“Off my rocker, more like,” Asra says, but he bumps his head against Ilya’s chest.

When he backs away, they’re standing in a clearing. A lake without a single ripple sits in the center, the source of the river from before, which has stopped flowing. The spray where it hits rocks is suspended. Above them, the clouds don’t move. They must be near the mountaintop, but thick forestation hides the view.

Ilya picks a magenta wildflower to tuck behind Asra’s ear. They fidget in the stillness.

“What’s that?” Ilya asks. He points across the lake, where giant snakeskins sit, dry husks in the shade. They disappear, leaving only their shape in the grass. A pair of soft hisses reverberates in Asra’s mind.

 _Welcome to the present_.


	2. Any Way Up

A dry breeze stirs the sand outside Asra’s sanctuary. Even if it becomes a storm, his protections will hold. He spins a hand to circulate the air inside, earning an appreciative sigh from Ilya, who sits across from him. Edible desert flowers garnish their breakfast, pops of color alongside Ilya’s coffee.

“Delicious as always, dear,” Ilya says.

“You don’t think it needs salt?”

Ilya waggles his eyebrows. “That’s what I’m here for.”

He leans to clasp Asra’s hand over the table. They reminisce about the recent Painted Daisy Festival, though dancing and drinking left them with more aches and impulsive souvenirs than memories.

“Still worth it. I could stay like this forever,” Ilya says, stroking Asra’s hand languidly.

“Sounds perfect.” Asra clears his plate to the last petal before stretching his free arm. “Ah, well, those canals won’t finish repairing themselves.”

“The others have it covered, don’t they?”

Their status is fuzzy in his mind, but it rings true enough. “What about our newer projects?”

“Pasha and Nadia can take care of the rest. They don’t need us.”

Ilya’s clockwork caresses raise the hair on the back of Asra’s neck. He pulls his hand away. “You said you wouldn’t abandon your family again. Or Vesuvia. Or…”

Ilya walks around to hug Asra’s shoulders, resting his chin on Asra’s head. Asra tries to relax into the embrace, to calm himself with the succulents on the windowsill.

“Don’t worry, darling, I’ll never leave you,” Ilya says. “Not like your parents did.”

Asra’s chair scrapes against the floor as he stands. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Ilya’s red sclera bleeds with pity. “None of them want us, you know. Muriel would rather I walked into the sea. And Carrow… He knows we let him die.”

“So you want to leave him again?”

“Humor me here. We’ve both been labeled outcasts. What has Vesuvia ever done for us?”

When Ilya reaches, Asra jerks away. His elbow bangs into a potted cactus. It doesn’t prick him.

“Ilya would never ask that,” he says. “And he wouldn’t do this. Not the person he is now.”

The walls cave in as the sanctuary crumbles into sand. Even though the particles can’t hurt him, Asra throws his arms in front of his face.

Lowering them reveals the mountaintop lake. Ilya stands with glazed eyes, his fingers twitching and his shoulder jerking.

“Ilya?” Asra tries to touch his elbow, but a barrier repels him. One of the hisses from before returns. _He must escape alone_.

Alone, without Asra to ground him. Asra paces, a habit he picked up from Ilya’s rants about everything from crabman conspiracies to how Pasha must hate him. Is some imaginary Asra being so hateful? Telling him to leave and never come back, things Ilya would claim were for his own good, as if all Asra ever wanted wasn’t for someone to _stay_?

Ilya remains unresponsive. Asra stands by him. It’s all he can do.

With a gasp, Ilya swivels to scoop Asra into his arms. “You’re really you, aren’t you? I guess you wouldn’t tell me if you weren’t, oh, that’s so confusing.”

Laughing, Asra nuzzles his neck. “Yes, it’s me.” Ilya melts around him.

“We, we worked in the library for days without rest, but you said it wasn’t enough. You led me into Valdemar’s laboratory. You said—you said I had to give myself up, that it was the only way to, to make up for—”

“Ilya.” Asra rubs between his shoulder blades. “You had to know I wouldn’t.”

“Got back here, didn’t I? Don’t worry, love.”

Asra relaxes in his arms. They part to examine the landscape.

“We won the present part, right? Do you think the river will flow downstream again?” Ilya asks.

Instead, large droplets rise from the lake. Spouts follow, and twisting streams lift up into the clouds, as if to feed a storm. The sky darkens for another reason: stone platforms float in the air, creating a disconnected spiral staircase.

The couple grins at each other. "Race you up," Ilya says before Asra can. They leap onto the first platform, which sinks an inch before rising again. It’s just wide enough to allow a running jump.

Asra pulls ahead, to Ilya’s complaints. “What did you expect?” Asra asks as he turns around. A couple of steps below, Ilya halts. They should be cresting the treetops, but the sky around them has shifted, the suspended water warping into fragmented images.

The first one Asra deciphers almost disrupts his footing. It’s his sanctuary again, with him and Ilya at the table—but they look years older, their familiars on their shoulders and true peace in their expressions.

He follows Ilya’s transfixed gaze to another image. In Vesuvia, Ilya opens the door to a cozy house. A dog barrels him over before Asra can welcome him inside.

The stone below Asra shifts to a new path. It leads him toward a ship with Ilya in the crow’s nest, waving down at him. Before he can pursue it, he turns to find the two of them sitting together, their wrinkled hands interlocked and Ilya resting a grey head on Asra. He doesn’t even look at the picture’s setting before jumping toward it.

“This way, Ilya,” he calls, but that illusion dissipates. The platforms all glide in different directions. The water shoots off in tendrils, until a dozen images surround them: a fuzzy infant drooling in Ilya’s arms, a ship with only Ilya on board, the pair of them sharing books in a Zadithi library, Muriel and Ilya crowding around a bedridden Asra.

By the time Asra evades Muriel’s stricken face, he’s lost the library. An adventure in a magical land catches his interest until a single gravestone blocks it. He stops, his legs jelly. How are they supposed to reach the good futures when the paths keep changing?

He turns to ask, only to find that Ilya isn’t on his platform, or even the one beside it. He’s several jumps away, frozen between an image of himself onstage and another of a battlefield’s triage station.

“Did… Did we chase after the same scenes? Any of them?” Ilya yells to him.

“We must have. You remember the forest, right?”

“I didn’t see a forest. Asra—”

“We just need to retrace our steps.” Even as he says it, the platforms shift again.

“It’s no use. I probably went for all the wrong things, we probably—”

“Focus, Ilya! There are plenty of nice futures here. We just need to regroup and find one.” Asra jumps onto the next platform toward Ilya, only for it to drift to the side.

Ilya pulls off his eyepatch and flings it at the nearest image. It collapses in a small shower.

“You know what, weird floating staircase? Until I found Asra again, I had no future. I don’t care what it brings if I can give it to him. Why else would I propose?”

Asra wobbles at a stone’s edge. “Since when did you propose?”

“Er, you’re right, I didn’t! Let’s go back to getting on the same page—”

“Forget the same page, we’re not even on the same platform. Just get to me, okay? Or wait there, and I’ll come to you.”

There is no direct path. Reaching Ilya means traveling downward, away from the top of the staircase and any appealing futures. Asra bypasses a beachside retirement before going back up, while Ilya scurries to meet him.

Finally, they land on the same platform. Ilya rubs his neck, his face flushed. “So, how do you feel about puppies?”

“They’re great. Especially the excitable ones who get ahead of themselves,” Asra says. Ilya coughs.

“Look, I, I’ve been trying not to make assumptions, so I wasn’t going to pressure you, or, or be so careless…” He hangs his head. “It was going to be perfect.”

“It doesn’t have to be.” Asra pats Ilya’s elbow. “How long have you been thinking about it?”

“Since we met. You know that.”

He didn’t.

“But as for responsible thoughts, I was planning to ask you after the trial,” Ilya says. “I, uh, already spoke with your parents about it.”

“Really?” If that’s true, this isn’t one of Ilya’s dramatic impulses. Something hammers in Asra’s chest where there shouldn’t be anything so alive.

“They wanted us all to talk, of course, but they—they like me.”

“I could have told you that. I like you, too,” Asra says. Ilya presses a hand to his chest and gasps.

“When were you going to tell me?”

Asra snorts. They float by a picture of their older selves cuddling in bed, turning Ilya’s face redder.

“Maybe it’s for the best,” Ilya says. “This trial has me mentally rewriting my speech. I do better with improv, anyway.”

“For what definition of better?”

“Er, more adventurous?”

“I do love adventure.”

“How about a lifetime of it?” Ilya swallows. “Wait, that’s not right, let me start over.”

“This isn’t actually a race. But so you know… the answer will be yes. However you ask. Wherever we end up.”

Ilya sputters. “Really?”

“Yes, really.”

Before Asra can get too self-conscious, Ilya whoops and picks him up. He spins him around while Asra laughs.  
  
“We’re in midair, you know,” Asra says.

“I won’t drop you, I’ll give you everything, anything you want, oh…”

The images dissolve, raining water past them in sheets and spurts. Ilya lowers Asra to the ground.

“Did we fail the trial?” Ilya asks.

“No, look.”

The stones all glide into a single path, this one straight through the clouds. Asra steps just far enough from Ilya to hold his hand as they begin their ascent.

They’re almost to the top, the clouds thick and humid around them, when Ilya lets go and leaps ahead. Asra chases his silhouette. He emerges to land in Ilya’s waiting arms.

“I win,” Ilya says between peppered kisses, and Asra doesn’t contest it.

* * *

A garden blooms atop the clouds, a plethora of roses, lilies, violets, and flowers even Asra can’t name. Butterflies flit about, their gossamer wings changing from purple to gold. At the center, a fountain loops water in heart-shaped spouts. Two strangers rest against it that Asra would know anywhere.

He hesitates as they turn to him, tongues flicking out. The great lavender snake tilts her head in beckoning. Her arm is looped through that of her shorter amber companion, who rests against her neck.

“Did Chimes and Flamel get, er, big?” Ilya asks.

“No, that’s them. The Lovers.” Asra steps forward, careful not to crush the flowers.

 _Congratulations for making it here_ , the lavender snake says.

“Thanks for, uh, having us,” Ilya says.

 _Do you regret your choices?_ the amber snake asks. Ilya looks down at Asra before shaking his head.

Asra’s throat is welled shut. How many times had he imagined this meeting? On a sudden urge, he pulls out his tarot deck. With the Lovers in front of him, his card depicting them is silent, but he passes it over for inspection. Unblinking eyes take it in with apparent amusement, making him itch.

 _You captured our love_ , the amber snake says.

 _And our harmony_.

Asra breathes out as he takes back the card.

“This might be inappropriate,” he says. Word fail him again as he spreads his arms.

They pull him in. A tail wraps around his ankle, and he giggles between their bodies, unexpectedly warm beneath the smooth scales.

“Come here, Ilya.”

“Oh, I, I don’t know if I should…”

 _Are you not going to be family?_ the lavender snake asks. Asra buries his face against her, and Ilya encircles him, until Asra is surrounded. Tears prick his eyes as the day catches up to him, everything that led to this endless affection.

They all separate. A butterfly lands on Ilya’s nose, turning him cross-eyed, to Asra’s entertainment.

“So, uh, what now? Is there a prize? A blessing, maybe?” Ilya asks.

The snakes speak in unison. _Is the true blessing not your partner?_

Ilya looks at Asra as if startled he’s there, even now. Maybe he’ll look that way every morning for years, for decades. Or maybe they’ll be like Asra’s parents, and always know the other is there, even without turning around.

“Actually, Asra,” Ilya says, “I hoped that before we left, we could—you know, the initials we saw in those trees…”

Those people might have wanted to live on, whatever happened to their bodies, or to write to someone else seeking to understand connection. Perhaps they just wanted to gather around the trees and share secret smiles, moments they won’t remember but will cherish.

Not for the first or last time, Asra takes Ilya’s hand.

“Let’s save that for an anniversary.”


End file.
